


Coney

by Arya_Greenleaf



Series: Ship + prompt answers [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 10:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4873327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A slice-of-life ficlet that takes place during the "domestic Steggy" or "Tiny James 'verse" from my OTP Challenge <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1815082">Margaret, May I?</a></p><p>The Carter-Rogers family spends the day at the beach. Sun, sand, and ice cream-sticky hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coney

**Author's Note:**

> An answer to the prompt "Steggy + Ice Cream" from the lovely [CJ/lavendersbleue](http://lavendersbleue.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, written in what is reportedly her favorite of my Steggy continuities. I hope you like it, darling!
> 
> Look, guys! It's short, sweet, and smutless! Where do I get my gold star?

“Hey! Buddy! Sl’down!”

Steve jogged toward where his son had stopped in the middle of racing across the sand, his toes just at the dividing line of wet and dry. He snatched the small boy up in his arms and swung him high before settling the child on his hip. James screeched with delight, eyes wide as he flew.

“You know the rules: no waves unless a big person’s with ya.”

The boy pouted, his full bottom lip pushed out comically far, the salty sea breeze ruffling his thick chestnut curls. “Yes, Papa.”

“Now let’s see if we can find some good shells for yer castle, alright?” James nodded enthusiastically and pointed his feet toward the sand, wiggling and straining to escape Steve’s arms. Down on his feet once more, he trust his hand upward to intercept Steve’s and dragged him toward the cold foam coming up to meet them. A few moments later had the pair of them racing back up the beach toward the spot they’d left Peggy with a pail full of stones and shells.

Peggy sat in the middle of a large circle of packed sand towers and turrets, the queen of a lopsided kingdom. She laughed as she watched them, James struggling to keep ahead of Steve’s comparatively massive strides to make it back to their spot first.

“Feet up!” Steve placed their pail down and caught James under the arms to lift him over the castle wall.

“Mama, look!” He opened his little fists to show up the perfectly smooth, white stones clutched inside. Peggy remarked at how beautiful they were. “They go on the big tower!” He dropped his body down into her lap, nearly upsetting the tower concerned with his feet in the process. He pressed the stones in a neat row in the flat top of the tower and surveyed his work.

Steve and his son worked meticulously over each section of the round sandcastle wall to decorate it with stones and shells. James demanded one entirely covered, as if with bricks, and sent Steve back toward the water to collect the required building materials.

Satisfied with the decoration and assured that no amount of water would _not_ simply seep into the sand if they attempted to dig a moat around the whole structure, James settled back into Peggy’s embrace comfortably.

“If yer the queen then what’m I?” He studied the shell in his hands, blue and striated on one side and pearly white on the other.

“Well, darling, you could be the king if you like.”

He shook his head. “I’ll be the prince. The king has’ta make all the choices. I don’t wanna make all the choices.”

Peggy laughed and combed her fingers through his salty, tangled curls. “Then who shall be our king?”

The boy narrowed his eyes at Steve where he sat with his legs stretched toward the water outside the wall. The Kodak he’d been snapping photographs on sat beside him on their red-checkered picnic blanket. A wicked grin spread across the child’s face. “Uncle James.”

Steve feigned offense. “Then what does that make me, ma leanbh?”

“Hmm, the joker!” He held the shell in his hands up to his nose as if hiding behind it. “No! The knight. You’kin be the knight.”

“And what shall our brave knight do for us, my prince?”

“Go on an adventure!”

“What kind’a adventure should I go on?”

James tapped the shell against his nose and hunkered further down in Peggy’s lap. “To get ice cream for the queen and the prince.”

Steve sat up straight and brushed the sand off of his hands. “How about me?”

“I guess so.”

Steve shook his head, amusement playing across his sun-kissed features, and got to his feet. Ice cream was going to completely spoil James’ dinner. But he supposed it wasn’t so bad to be spoiled once in a while—it meant more to Steve than he thought people realized that he actually _could_ spoil his child.

Within reason, of course.

His Ma would tell him dinner wasn’t as big a deal as seeing the smile on James’ face. And it wasn’t as if they did this every night.

Steve returned to their spot in the sand, a pair of waffle cones piled high with ice cream—one vanilla, one chocolate—in his hand. Peggy accepted her cone graciously with a vaguely royal flourish of her hand. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear to keep it from blowing back into her face in the warm breeze, and swiped at the ice cream with the flat of her tongue. She winked at Steve saucily. He had to turn away, laughing and sputtering.

“What’s funny?”

Steve coughed into the crook of his arm. “Nothing ma leanbh. Eat yer ice cream before it melts.”

James didn’t need to be told twice. He tucked his shell into the front pocket of his shirt and attacked the cone with gusto.

The sun sank toward the horizon, painting the gentle waves with brilliant red and orange and turning the dome of the sky into a dark bruise. James held his cone out toward Steve over the wall of the castle, still half uneaten. “Papa, I’m full.”

“You sure about that?” The child nodded, curls bouncing around his face. His hands and mouth were sticky with melted vanilla, a long drip of it dried against his forearm.

“Darling I think you’ve got more on you than in you.” He laughed and looked down at his hands before proceeding to lick his fingers. It was poor behavior. Absolutely shouldn’t be encouraged. Steve crunched into the waffle cone to finish it and keep from laughing. Peggy popped the last bit of her cone into her mouth and leaned outside the castle wall to fish for a handkerchief out of their knapsack. Much to James’ chagrin, she wet in against her tongue and scrubbed at his face.

Considerably less sticky, James carefully climbed out over the sandcastle wall and arranged himself across Steve’s legs. He eyed the boardwalk and the lights of the amusement park beyond over Steve’s shoulder, delighted shrieks and screams and tinkling music just barely audible over the waves from their vantage point.

“C’we go on the Cyclone?”

“Abs’lutely not.” Steve finished the ice cream cone in a few big bites.

James pouted and picked at the buttons on the front of Steve’s summer shirt. “Why not?”

“Because ya just had ice cream, kiddo. Ya wan’it to stay in yer belly, don’t ya?” James pursed his lips, considering. Not to mention the fact that he was far too small, but he’d never accept that as an argument.

Peggy stood up in the center of the castle and let herself out of it. “I think it might be time to head home.” She brushed the sand off the seat of her pants and lifted her son up to settle on her hip. He’d complained about the distance from the boardwalk to their chosen spot earlier, there was no doubt he was going to complain after a hard day of playing. “You need a bath.”

James’s face scrunched down in protest and then opened with anticipation. “Wait!” He flicked his feet, still dangling midair, not yet settled in Peggy’s embrace. “Kin I wreck it?”

“But we worked so hard on it! Why don’t you leave it for some other little boy to play in tomorrow?”

“ _Please?_ ” Peggy relented with the condition that he knock the sandcastle down _gently_ since it was full of stones and shells. He hit the ground practically running, his hands up in the air and curled into claws and his face twisted in a snarl as he stomped through the turrets and towers. He paused, picking up a perfectly round, bright white stone from the debris and held it out to Steve. “Here y’go.”

“What’s this?”

James held his hand out for Peggy to take on one side, the other extended toward Steve. Both hunched toward him, his petite frame not quite affording them the luxury of walking comfortably while hand-holding.

“Yer ra-ward for bein’ the knight.”

The three of them trekked through the loose sand to the boardwalk, going in starts and stops as they swung their child between them just to hear him squeal and laugh. Brushed free of as much sand as possible, they made their way toward the subway station and onto the train. Peggy accepted compliments on what a sweet child her boy was when he offered his seat between his parents to an elderly woman. Steve beamed.

James pulled the blue shell out of his pocket and twisted in his seat. He placed it against the sun-speckled flesh of Peggy’s chest. “Kin Mama wear my shell? Like a mermaid.” He looked up at Peggy and informed her that she could be the mermaid queen if she wanted, rather than simply a regular queen.

“Of course.” Steve reached across to take the shell. “See here?” He indicated a tiny hole near the hinge. “We can put it on a necklace, through there.”

At home, James submitted to his bath with little protest and then made faces at himself in the mirror when Peggy put him up on a bench in front of the sink and turned the dryer on him, determined that he wouldn’t go to bed with a wet head.

Peggy tucked the boy in and planted a kiss on Steve’s cheek as she passed him. He pulled a starchy shirt and a small blue tie that matched his own out of the dresser and laid it out for Mass in the morning.

“You think yer Ma’d want some of the pictures from today?”

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll take ‘em down to get developed after church.”

“Don’t forget to check the box for doubles.”

She was working a brush through her hair at the vanity in their bedroom, windswept and smelling like the sea. He stood behind her, kneading her shoulders while she worked through a stubborn tangle. She looked up, catching his smile in the mirror.

“What is it, darling?”

“Nothin’, just never thought things’d turn out this great.”

**Author's Note:**

> [To send a prompt, drop an ask in my tumblr inbox. Anon is usually on.](http://onheil-ferguson.tumblr.com/ask)


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